Mauna Kea – Page 24 – A Darker View

Mauna Kea Observing

Yes, it is three in the afternoon and I am just waking up. That was the plan.

A night spent under dark Mauna Kea skies with a telescope. It has been much too long since I had a good night out with the ‘scope, it was time. A few items conspired to make it happen… Good weather, a note from the HR department that I was at maximum on accumulated vacation time, use it or lose it! Additionally, my friend and co-worker, Olivier Martin, was looking for a night of observing as well.

With a couple days of approved vacation I headed for the mountain.

A partly cloudy sky greeted us on arrival, high and heavy cirrus hid much of the blue. The forecast was for this to clear off during the first part of the night, not yet time to panic. Not wanting to deal with the crowd at the Mauna Kea VIS we hid out in a spot I found on one of the nearby back roads, a place where we would not be disturbed by any visitors through the night, a place that is completely dark.

New Telescope Happy — Olivier beside his new telescope, a 12" Orion Dobsonian

Olivier brought his new 12″ Orion Dobsonian. And I do mean new, it was not yet fully assembled! The usual troubles of life had conspired to rob him of any time in the few days since the telescope arrived. He had assembled the main parts, the base and OTA, but had yet to install the elevation bearings, handles, encoders or the primary mirror. Thus we spent the first two hours finishing the telescope, no problem as final assembly gave the heavy cirrus clouds time to clear out.

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An Offering

A common sight atop Mauna Kea… An offering to the gods or spirits believed to reside on the summit of this incomparable mountain. A lei of flowers or a package wrapped in ti leaves, often placed on one of the ahu that are to be found in the summit region. We leave these offerings alone out of respect for those who continue to worship on Mauna Kea.

Early this week we were surprised to find a set of plumeria lei on one of the pillars in front of our building. Bright white and yellow, the scent of the flowers hanging heavy around the loading dock door. Quite a contrast in a world of dark red cinder and cold, a bit of the tropics that lie far below the summit.

Why would someone leave the lei at our door? A thank-you for what we do? A gentle protest at our presence on the mountain? I wonder as we drive down, lost in thought.

Venus Transit in the Press

Public awareness of a unique astronomical event, the Transit of Venus, is appearing. While avid sky-watchers have been anticipating this event for years, the general public is mostly unaware of the event.

This seems to be changing… A number of articles have appeared in the mainstream press this last week, from MSNBC to Fox News, providing information about the transit.

Yes, it is the same article on all of the sites, all apparently picked up from the Space.com site. There is some lesson here on the nature of corporate news today. In any case it is nice to see an astronomical event getting coverage. Any opportunity to get more astronomy onto the public stage is to be taken advantage of.

A transit is a less spectacular event, not exactly a total solar eclipse. It is quite interesting from an astronomical and historical standpoint. There are other articles, the transit is getting more press as the date approaches. In the run up to June 5th it will be interesting to see just what the public response to this event will be.

Poli’ahu i ke kapu

Poli’ahu is the goddess of snows who calls Mauna Kea her home. Poli’ahu i ke kapu, recently released by Hāwane, is a tribute to Poli’ahu, the divine snow goddess of Mauna Kea.

True, the sales of the song on iTunes go to KAHEA’s Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance Mauna Kea Legal Defense Fund. This is the same group that opposes telescopes on the mountain. The Enemy? Not really. In this case I respect those who stand up for what they believe, even if I disagree. KAHEA does needed work on other fronts across the islands.

Besides, it is a good song…

Mauna Kea Dusk

Venus Transit on Mauna Kea

A Venus Transit is a truly rare event. Transits occur in pairs eight years apart, with the next pair not occurring for another 120 years. The first event of the current pair occurred in 2004. Thus the next event will happen in June 2012. Considering the century long period between events, this is the last chance to witness a Venus transit during our lifetimes.

The 2012 event will be visible from the west coast of North America to Japan, China, Australia and Central Asia. For those wanting to observe the entire event from start to finish the choices narrow quite a bit. You have the choice of the Central Pacific, Japan, as well as Eastern China and Eastern Australia. This, of course, includes here in the Hawaiian Islands.

Many sky-watchers from North America will see only one choice if they wish to observe the event… the Big Island. The only place easily accessible by air, featuring excellent visitor accommodation, and an observing site that sits above the clouds that could so easily interfere with carefully laid plans. For the serious observer there is one obvious choice… Mauna Kea.

We saw the first signs of this well over a year ago. The tour companies that specialize in astronomy related travel, the folks that feature solar eclipse tours and similar events, began scouting Mauna Kea as a destination. Then the ads appeared, in Sky & Telescope magazine, Astronomy magazine, etc., “See the transit from Mauna Kea!” We had fair warning that this event was not going to pass peacefully.

Visibility chart for the 2012 Venus transit, image credit: Fred Espenak/NASA

Some folks seem to think the crowd will be huge, a thousand people or more. I am not so certain, this does not have the general appeal of a total solar eclipse. The transit is something that will be of interest to amateur astronomers and some interested segments of the public. I personally expect hundreds of people coming to Mauna Kea to view the transit, not thousands.

However many folks do ascend the mountain for this event, we have begun putting plans in place to handle it. Various groups have met to do a bit of planning. Most significantly, those in charge of managing the mountain, The Office of Mauna Kea Management, are putting a few measures in place. As usual, expect to stop at the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station on the day of the transit. But this day there will be a few differences…

All available MKSS staff will be on duty. All of the Mauna Kea rangers and visitor station staff will be helping make sure assistance is available to visitors when traveling to the high altitude environment of the summit.
Access to the mountain will be controlled for the day, a gate at the VIS allowing access for official vehicles only.
A free shuttle will run from the VIS to the summit. The Mauna Kea tour companies providing the vehicles and drivers.
Solar telescopes and video monitors will be set up at the VIS to allow safe viewing. Staff will be available to answer questions and assists with the equipment.
Several other locations on the island will be setup for viewing the transit with solar telescopes and staff. Expect these to include ‘Imiloa, Keck HQ in Waimea, and some possible other locations.

All of these plans are somewhat preliminary, details may change as the date approaches and final arrangements are made. I will attempt to post what I know here on Darker View.

Myself? I plan to observe the event from the summit. Set up behind Keck with a solar telescope to photograph the transit. We plan to set up a live feed of the transit for use by other sites, and available to viewers across the internet.

Keck in Motion Scene Guide

I have been getting a few questions about the video. To answer a few of them I have compiled a guide to the scenes. Some quick explanations to what you are seeing, information on the camera used as well as the exposure information.

The video is a combination of two techniques. Many scenes were filmed as standard video then accelerated during editing to allow the motion to become clear. Examples of this are scenes of telescopes slewing and the interferometer delay lines moving.

Slower subjects, such as clouds or the stars moving across the sky, were photographed as time lapse. Here a large number of still images were taken. These are then processed and converted to video using Photoshop CS5 before loading into the video editing software, Adobe Premiere Elements. To construct the time lapse sequences sometimes required thousands of separate images, quickly filling memory cards and exhausting batteries. After dark it is long exposure time lapse that is used, with individual exposures often 15 seconds to one minute long.

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A Bright Glow from Halema’uma’u

It caught everyone’s attention, suddenly the southern sky lit up, a bright glow coming from the direction of our volcano. This occurred about 21:45 last night, we were getting ready to put away the telescopes, ending a great evening at the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Center.

The red glow was unmistakeable, something was happening at Halemau’uma’u. We moved to where we could see the brightly lit plume over the volcano, conversation buzzing with questions, what is going on?

Our guess is that something, most likely a large rockfall, disturbed the lava lake at the bottom of Halema’uma’u crater. The lake, normally crusted over and dark, can be easily disturbed. If something happens to break up the crust, the glow of this very hot lava is surprisingly bright. Bright enough that we were surprised by the show from our vantage point about 30 miles away.

What happened? I will have to read the daily report later today and see if anything out of the ordinary is noted. A nice event, and a treat for the tourists still at the VIS near closing. The glow faded over the next 20-30 minutes. After closing the VIS and beginning my drive back down the mountain, it had faded enough to be barely visible again.

My Canon G11 is not normally a good after dark camera, but given the bright moonlight, and the brighter glow from the volcano, it did fairly well…

Update! Today’s volcano report indicates a series of large rockfalls occurred last night.

Halema'uma'u Glow — The plume at Halema'uma'u lit up at night as seen from the Mauna Kea VIS, 15s exposure with a Canon G11

The Morning Commute

When heading to Waimea this time of year, I am driving right at sunrise. Sometimes you just have to stop and take the photo, or in this case a full set of photos for a panorama, even if I risk being late for the truck to the summit… (Click image to view properly)

Mauna Kea Sunrise Panorama — Sunrise behind Mauna Kea from the Mamalahoa Hwy, near Waimea

Laser Return Photometery

A different use for amateur astrophotography gear.

An amateur CCD camera can do more than take pretty pictures. There is no reason why any decent telescope, however small, and a CCD camera can not be used to do real science, or real engineering in this case.

The goal of the night was to perform proper photometry on the laser returns with independent equipment. We want to quantify the performance of the Keck adaptive optics laser systems. We launch two powerful lasers into the sky, one from each telescope, to allow analysis of the atmospheric distortions through which the telescope is observing. Using the data the system can correct for this atmospheric distortion and create much sharper images of distant stars and galaxies.

The lasers pass through a layer of sodium atoms about 90km (55miles) above the ground. There the 589nm yellow light excites these sodium atoms creating a glowing beacon, what we call the laser return. This return is what we look at to analyze atmospheric distortion. A brighter return allows better data and better performance of the system.

Both the Keck 1 and Keck 2 lasers in operation under the light of a nearly full Moon

Amateur astrophotography gear is perfectly capable of doing this task. A portable telescope, a proper CCD camera, combined with care to acquire calibrated images. All that I needed to add to the setup was a photometric V filter.

It was a perfect night for it, clear, dry and cold. Best of all, there was no wind to bounce the telescope around and chill anyone working outside. The winds are nearly constant atop at 14,000ft peak, calm nights are unusual, I was lucky indeed.

I setup the telescope atop a crust of ice and snow. The snow was convenient as it allowed me to set down gear on a cleaner surface than the gritty volcanic cinder underneath, keeping everything quite a bit cleaner. The altitude and cold made setup and breakdown a slow, laborious process, and added unique difficulties. I had to be very careful moving the heavy gear, so as not to slip on the icy snow. When I went to move the telescope tripod I found it frozen into the snow and cinder! I had to heave hard to break it free.

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